Paramount Dumping VC-1 in Favor of MPEG4 AVC?
Posted by Tyler Pruitt
closeAuthor: Tyler Pruitt
Name: Tyler Pruitt
Email: tyler@formatwarcentral.com
Site: http://www.tylerpruitt.com
About: As a life long Geek, Tyler is pretty much addicted to anything that has to do with technology. He became hooked on HDTV in early '04, and hasn't looked back since. Tyler is a HD video content addict, and has been since the days of recording HD movies onto D-VHS tapes.
At his day job in the aerospace industry, he is never too far away from the latest FWC related news thanks to Google Reader on the iPhone.See Authors Posts (351) on June 22, 2007
Filed Under: Blu-ray, HD DVD, Studios
It seems that Paramount is switching from Microsoft’s VC-1, to MPEG4 AVC on all its future HD DVD titles. On their new Blu-ray titles, they have already switched to AVC from MPEG2. The movies include: The Warriors, Norbit, The Untouchables, and Black Snake Moan. We have a suspicion that Paramount is going to take a play out of Warner’s book by doing one encode for both formats. The problem with this scenario is that the Blu-ray titles would be limited to HD DVD’s 30Mb/s peak video bit rate (Blu-ray’s is 40Mb/s).
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- Microsoft’s Kevin Collins Responds to Paramount Payoff Rumors
- Paramount Jumps Over The Hedge To HD DVD Exclusivity
- Paramount Re-Issued Blu-ray Movies Land at Wal-Mart
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I was under the impression that the only difference between the HD DVD and Blu-ray bitrates was the audio, not the video.
I know that the maximum bitrate on the DTS-HD MA is different between the two formats, with HD DVD having a slightly lower bitrate than Blu-ray, but considering the fact that these audio tracks are incredibly rare, at least for the time being, no one has the chance to compare them anyway.
The peak A/V mux rate for HD DVD is 30Mb/s. The peak A/V mux rate for Blu-ray is 48Mb/s(40Mb/s for video).
Tyler,
Do you think the increased mux bitrate makes a difference?
I’ve compared a handful of titles, and read countless reviews and I’ve only come across one title (Flags of our Fathers) that was a close call between the two formats.
Perhaps Blu-ray hasn’t tapped into it’s full potential, but I can’t imagine why not.
Do you know anything about this?
I think it really depends on the original source. Take something like U2’s Rattle and Hum or any concert. The strobing lights actually are a fairly difficult thing to compress. Since your codec is looking to only track the changes in a video “talking heads” are likely amongst the easiest to encode whilst flashing and a lot of movement are more difficult. Blu-ray’s higher video bandwidth would likely deliver superior quality for these movies.
I’m not sure what the article is referring to. The HD DVD version of The Untouchables is VC-1.
Robert here is the tech specs of the HD DVD taken from highdefdigest:
Technical Specs
* HD DVD
* HD-30 Dual-Layer Disc
Video Resolution/Codec
* 1080p/AVC MPEG-4
* 480p/i/MPEG-2 (Supplements Only)
Yeah, I read Bracke’s review. Here’s a link to a pic I snapped of the info display of my HD-XA2…
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=865398
I guess you can believe what you want.
Robert, Thanks for posting the screen shot, I updated the original post.